Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(14)

“Enemies are at the door.”

“Yes! Not only guards, but musketeers! Our guys asked me to call to let you know they need you downstairs.”

“No need. I’ll settle things from here.”

“What?”

Darrick hung up. Once more, he toured the control room, turning on each monitor in turn. At last, he settled down in front of the screen identified with the tag “Defence lasers.” The next screen over was connected to surveillance cameras. Not by coincidence.

In one document sent to Darrick by Carolin, the listing of the reactor’s equipment included lasers, unspecified. The young man hadn’t paid any attention to one more item, but Darrick had been willing to bet his life that these weren’t simple weather lidars.

He began by testing the cameras. Their magnification was far superior to that of his spyglass.

His augmented gaze swept over the landscape. Though the sky was clouding over, the diffuse sunlight was more than sufficient for the dome’s instruments. Darrick began with the land behind the basilica. He smiled when he spotted a handful of men trying to sneak up on a secondary entrance. The poor devils! They didn’t know he now controlled all of the dome’s machines.

Turning back to the master screen, he deployed the eight lasers positioned all around the dome, secreted inside decorative gargoyles according to the specs.

He identified the laser covering the back of the basilica, requested a targeting zoom, and centred the reticle on a man crouching behind some bushes. He squeezed the firing button. The foliage went up in flames, as well as the guard’s uniform, and then the man’s hair. The guard rolled on the ground, his mouth open as he uttered inaudible shrieks.

Darrick cried out, shocked. He hadn’t expected the weapon to work so well or to wield such power.

He tried again, aiming at a wall close to another would-be attacker. The man jumped and retreated hastily, spurred on by the phenomenon’s inexplicable origin. His flight encouraged the others to flee as well.

Darrick was plugging into the laser covering the front of the basilica when Carolin burst into the gallery, panting hard from the climb.

“What’s going on?”

The screen showed the plaza before the steps to the entrance. Half a musketeer company was standing in full battle array, guns shouldered, at the foot of the stairs. Among them, Darrick recognized Réjean Lacombe, sitting in a wheelchair. A man was leaning over, for a consultation perhaps or to tell him something. An officer maybe, since the man was older, pot-bellied, and white-haired. Or maybe not, since the stranger wasn’t wearing a uniform, but an exceedingly well-cut costume.

That face was familiar… Darrick turned to Carolin and pointed at the screen.

“That’s him? That’s my father?”

The student nodded.

Darrick fired before he’d even thought through what he was doing. He’d had 20 years to picture this very moment, and he’d exhausted all the possible pleasures he might draw from permutations of his revenge. All that was left was anger, and the urge to erase an error and start over again. It was simple, really. He’d waited too long not to do it.

The beam struck full in the chest and the man exploded more than he burned.

“I didn’t recognize him,” the ironbearer admitted, his voice hushed.

Twenty years gone… He didn’t feel that much older, but the years had counted double for his father. And they hadn’t counted at all for his mother, who had died at sea only a few days before the ship of exiles had sighted the French coast.

The governor’s nearest companions recoiled and backed away, their hair singed by the heat of the beam. A few guards tried to come to the governor’s aid, undoing their capes or uniform tops to throw on the charred body. Others rushed forth courageously, sword in hand, but Darrick swung the laser beam before the entire group, sweeping the entire plaza from left to right.

The intense heat would have discouraged the hardiest souls. The flagstones fissured, the weeds growing in the cracks turned into a scatter of ashes, and drops of molten rock rained outward wherever the beam tarried a few seconds too many.

The officers ordered their men back, retreating to the edge of the plaza. The musketeers lined up again, facing the basilica entrance.

Darrick gazed upon them with growing irritation. They were mad! Why were they so obstinate about staying there?

“Time to end it,” the ironbearer whispered.

“No!”

Carolin’s hand came down on Darrick’s, pulling back the joystick. The laser carved a glowing furrow across the plaza, only a few feet from the closest guards. Without Carolin, most of them would have been mowed down.

“What have you done!” Darrick roared.

I should have strangled him.

“But I… I couldn’t let you,” Carolin stammered. “It’s not what I wanted.”

Below, guards and musketeers broke and ran in spite of the orders shouted by their officers.

“Come on, look!”

The ironbearer grabbed the student’s arm and plugged into the surveillance cameras watching Sillery. The zoom allowed him to leap over the two kilometres between the basilica and the small streets of the seaside town. The tribals had landed. For a long while, Darrick admired the show with boundless delight. His father had been so proud of Quebec, the impregnable fortress, the last bastion of the civilization of yore. No revenge could have been sweeter.